RMI/MIWA and the portatour® route planner
About RMI/MIWA
MIWA is the Motor Industry Workshop Association of South Africa, the largest trade association falling under the Retail Motor Industry Organisation. It represents the collective voice for the aftermarket independent workshops, directly representing over 2,500 businesses nationally.
MIWA strives to keep its members abreast of new developments in the ever-changing repair industry. It ensures that vehicles are repaired to acceptable standards in order to last longer, perform better and maintain safety on South African Roads.
The RMI and MIWA mainly rely on membership fees, so the retention and recruitment of members is crucial. The association’s field reps play an essential part in growing the membership base to ensure long term growth and sustainability.
Why automatic route planning?
Before portatour®, the field reps were faced with a series of challenges when organising their daily sales activities. In South Africa, the reps have vast territories to cover from dense urban areas to rural areas, all requiring a lot of travel time.
Keeping an accurate overview of all businesses scattered across the territories was challenging. Planning efficient routes was a very tedious job and it was also a time-consuming manual process to identify topics relevant to each customer. In total, they could spend three hours or more each week planning routes. As a result, they drove excessively long routes with lots of windshield time and still did not manage to see all their customers according to the agreed frequency. It was time to go digital.
Implementing portatour®: Seamless launch and works like a charm
Pieter Niemand and his team evaluated different providers. portatour® perfectly combined route optimisation and CRM functionalities.
The transition from paper to digital was seamless. Within three meetings of two hours each, all data was uploaded to portatour®, the reps got trained and were up and running right away.
Over the course of the first weeks, the configuration was fine-tuned and customised to ensure the reps had all the necessary information about their members handily available on their smartphones.
portatour® is very easy to work with. I think anybody who is not even tech-inclined can use the tool.
Madoda Sonwabo, Associational Rep Johannesburg
The portatour® after-sales and support service is excellent. Even though portatour® is a SaaS-solution, we shaped and customised the tool to fit our specific use-case. And it worked for us like a charm.
Pieter Niemand, MIWA National Director

Route planning now: Clear overview and easy planning with portatour®
Today, instead of carrying around spreadsheets, the reps have their daily routes mapped out on their cell phones. It is also a much safer and practical solution. portatour® was a real game changer in their daily work life. Instead of three hours, it now takes the push of a button to schedule the route for the coming week, taking into account individual call intervals for each and every customer.
Instead of spending hours gathering the call reports from the last visits, the reps have all this information seamlessly on their phones.
You have all you need to know on your phone now, no need to slip into the office and get everything planned and printed out anymore. We now have a lot more time on our hands for retaining and recruiting members.
Brione Schoeman, Associational Rep Western Region
Arriving prepared leaves a very professional impression on customers. They feel appreciated and listened to. This intangible value is so important - a good image defined by trust and a high-quality service. The customer needs to experience the benefits of being a member to RMI, and with portatour®, we can deliver excellent service.
Pieter Niemand, MIWA National Director
Benefits of portatour®: More visits, less mileage and a tremendous help to daily business
Apart from creating more time, portatour® also had an impact on the business itself. After crunching the numbers, here are the results: It is possible to do between one and three extra visits per day, depending on the territory. This means that in total, the six reps achieve about 2,500 additional visits throughout a year.
The optimised routes focus on customers due for a visit while minimising driving times. Between 15% and 18% fewer miles are driven over the year, representing a hugely positive impact. This obviously results in attractive cost savings, while, at the same time enabling the reps to visit more customers per day, all while adhering to all their customers’ individualised call intervals.